Jack - Episode 70 | Motion Practice

Episode Date: March 31, 2024

This week in Cannon’s court; both sides file notices of responses and replies that they've filed on the secret docket, but DoJ’s public filing gives a glimpse into what is in the secret filings; Carlos de Oliveira requests a bill of particulars in his response to DoJ’s opposition to his motion to dismiss; we are still awaiting responses to Cannon’s order to submit potentially erroneous jury instructions.We have updates on John Eastman’s and Jeffrey Clark’s disbarment proceedings.Plus, a couple of listener questions, and more! Could the Special Counsel Challenge Judge Cannon’s Jury Instructions Before They’re Delivered? | Lawfarehttps://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/could-the-special-counsel-challenge-judge-cannon-s-jury-instructions-before-they-re-delivered Brian Greer’s Quick Guide to CIPAhttps://www.justsecurity.org/87134/the-quick-guide-to-cipa-classified-information-procedures-act/ AMICI CURIAE to the District Court of DC https://democracy21.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Attachment-Brief-of-Amici-Curiae-in-Support-of-Governments-Proposed-Trial-Date.pdfGood to know:Rule 403bhttps://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_40318 U.S. Code § 1512https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 Prior RestraintPrior Restraint | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information InstituteBrady MaterialBrady Rule | US Law |Cornell Law School | Legal Information Institutehttps://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brady_rule#:~:text=Brady%20material%2C%20or%20the%20evidence,infer%20against%20the%20defendant's%20guiltJenksJencks Material | Thomson Reuters Practical Law Glossaryhttps://content.next.westlaw.com/Glossary/PracticalLaw/I87bcf994d05a11e598dc8b09b4f043e0?transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)Gigliohttps://definitions.uslegal.com/g/giglio-information/Statutes:18 U.S.C. § 241 | Conspiracy Against Rights18 U.S.C. § 371 | Conspiracy to Defraud the United States | JM | Department of Justice18 U.S.C.  § 1512 | Tampering With Victims, Witnesses, Or Informants Questions for the pod Submit questions for the pod here https://formfacade.com/sm/PTk_BSogJCheck out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Follow AGFollow Mueller, She Wrote on Posthttps://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P

MSW Media I signed an order appointing Jack Smith. And those who say Jack is a fanatic. Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. Wait, what law have I broken? The events leading up to and on January 6th. Classified documents and other presidential records. You understand what prison is?

Send me to jail! Welcome to episode 70 of Jack, the podcast about all things special counsel. It's Sunday, the last day of March, March 31st. I'm Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe. So with just a few weeks to go before the Supreme Court will hear arguments on immunity in the federal January 6th case against Trump, it appears as though he will go to trial in the state case brought by the Manhattan DA. Trump's lawyers have notified Judge Eileen Cannon that he will be busy with that trial through May and won't be able to begin

the Florida trial on its currently scheduled date of May 20th. We'll discuss that and some additional Trump surreplies to the government's responses to his motions to dismiss the case against him. Yeah. And we're going to talk a lot about motion practice in this episode. So party. Okay. We have some great research also from Roger

Parloff over at Lawfare. And it's related to that strange order that Judge Cannon issued on jury instructions that we covered last week. Plus we have a ruling recommending disbarment for John Eastman, who's one of the co-conspirators in the federal DC indictment against Donald Trump. Yes. Yes. So, all right. So, if we do our standard good week, bad week, I'm going to go ahead and take the low hanging fruit and say, bad week for John Eastman.

Not a good, not a productive or positive development when the judge basically reviewing your disbarment case says, yes, I recommend he be disbarred. So he's pretty close to having the hatchet dropped on his law license. Yeah, no, I agree. And I could add to that. It's also sort of by proxy a bad week for Trump, not just because of Eastman's disbarment ruling, which says that the judge said John Eastman and Donald Trump participated in a conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding again. I mean, how many times have they said that now out of this California court? But also, Jeffrey Clark, and we're going to cover Jeffrey Clark's

disbarment proceeding in more detail next week because it's still going on, but we're learning a lot of new things that could impact the Trump DC case from the testimony coming out of that disbarment hearing, including testimony from Rosen and Donahue, who were the acting attorney general and acting deputy attorney general, and also some testimony from one of the Pats, Pat Philbin, who I believe was the deputy White House counsel under Trump during the whole January 6th thing went down. We learned, for example, that something we long suspected but got confirmation, Jeffrey Clark actually was the acting attorney general for a few minutes on January 3rd. Yikes.

Yikes. Yeah. And so that, and he also has stated that he was Donald Trump's personal lawyer. Trump was his client, not the United States, not the Department of Justice. So some not great stuff. And he pled, I think he pled the fifth, a bunch not great stuff coming out of Clark's disbarment hearing, which we'll go into over in detail. But yeah, bad week for those fellas for sure. Definitely. And while we're talking about the Trumpster, bad week for him too,

right? I mean, it started out on a decent note where he gets the bond in his civil case reduced significantly to be able to make that bond. But then it went downhill from there. He lost that gambit to try to push back the Manhattan DA case. So that thing is locked and loaded now. Yeah. He had a really bad showing in that hearing for the state case that, and as you said, jury selection begins April 15th, pushing the trial that was never going to happen in Florida off that May 20 date. Let's talk about that because Trump has filed a scheduling conflict notice with Judge Cannon. And it says on March 25th, the judge presiding over the people versus Trump scheduled jury selection to commence April 15th. While the exact date of any trial cannot be

known with certainty, because of jury selection, religious observances, probably talking about Passover there, and the anticipated schedule of the trial, we anticipate President Trump will be on trial in People v Trump from April 15th through the end of May. Our initial proposed schedule anticipated a March 25th trial date in the People v. Trump, and therefore the dates that we propose to the court, particularly in late May and early June, are no longer workable for President Trump in light of the adjourned trial date. As the court is aware, the schedule in New York consists of a jury trial Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. From the start of the adjourned trial date. As the court is aware, the schedule in New York consists of a jury trial Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from the start of the trial until its

conclusion. So while none of us again expected that the documents case was going to begin in May, this kind of scheduling conflict is something Trump has done in the past. He creates them, right? In 2023, for example, he tried to pit the New York attorney general Tish James Hurst's civil fraud trial against the Manhattan DA election interference hush money trial. And he tried to pit those judges against one another by asking both judges to schedule the trials at the same time so that then he could ask them to delay both trials. And E. Gene Carroll's lawyer, who had nothing to do with either case, Robbie Kaplan, saw what was going on, notified Judge Marchand

of the Trump plot. And then Judge Marchand and Judge Angoron were able to work out their schedules. And of course, Donald tried last minute, like you said, to delay the Manhattan DA's case by asking the Southern District of New York, the Department of Justice, the feds, for documents pertaining to Michael Cohen. And he asked for them last minute so that he could turn around and claim that there were discovery violations and try to get the whole case dismissed or at least delayed by 90 days. But the judge saw right through it. He was having none of it. He whole, wholly blames Donald Trump for that delay and scheduled jury selection to begin

on April 15th. Isn't it refreshing to see a judge just cut right through a lot of BS and give a decisive ruling from the bench that moves the trial forward? Yeah, it's really nice, especially since in this particular case, the election interference hush money case, this is the only delay that has happened and it ended up being just 21 days. So that is nice. I wish we had that kind of thing going on in Florida.

Yeah, pretty amazing. And now of course we go to Florida where that does not exist. Um, but where we do have Judge Cannon's secret docket, which is kind of creating a log jam of undocketed filings without electronic case filing numbers or ECF numbers as they're, you see them sometimes printed on the front of a pleading. So without these numbers, the filings are very difficult to reference. Right. Like the one thing we emailed on this day, like it's got no number to reference.

It starts to sound like a conversation between organized crime figures. Remember that thing, that thing that we talked about? Put it with the other thing inside the third thing. Yeah. You know the thing with the words. Yeah. That's right. That paper, bring the papers. Okay. So this past week, both sides had to file notices of responses and replies that they've had to file on the secret docket. And you know, when you bring up the mafia crime boss language, I have to giggle because I think that was sometime late last week.

There was it was trending on Twitter, now known as X, that his new nickname, Donald Trump's new nickname is Don Poorleone. And I thought that that was a pretty apt nickname. A reflection of his civil verdicts hanging out there against him or a reflection of his poor political fundraising or maybe all that. I don't know. Maybe all of it. Yeah, because I mean, as you said in Good Week, Bad Week, they did lower his bond to 175 million.

He still owes 464 million, but he only has to put up 175. And he only had 10 days to do that. He still hasn't, as far as I know, put that money up. And he had a real hard time getting the $91.63 million for eGene. So I'm not so sure it'll be just super simple for him to bond at 175 million, but we'll know soon enough. Yeah. And I got to tell you, I mean, before we not looking to go super deep on this, but the whole idea of getting the bond reduced just bothers me on such an enormous level. How

many hundreds, hundreds of defendants are brought in front of judges are all around New York every week. And they are told that, you know, they're given an amount of bond that will require to get them out of jail. And they tell the judge, I just don't have that money. I can't possibly raise it. And they all go to jail, like every one of them. I know this is a lot of money and it's a weird situation. But I mean, I'm still looking for the court that just treats this guy like everybody else.

So far, we haven't really seen that. But anyway, in one of his filings on the infamous secret docket, Trump's filings, it says that President Donald J. Trump respectfully submits this notice pursuant to the court's February 20th, 2024 order, ECF number 320, after conferring with the special counsel's office in order to provide public notice that President Trump is submitting three unredacted reply briefs to the court and Council of Record via email this evening. The three reply briefs relate to the following pretrial motions which have not yet been docketed. Number one, motion to dismiss the superseding indictment based on selective and vindictive prosecution.

Number two, motion to dismiss the superseding indictment based on selective and vindictive prosecution. Number two, motion to dismiss the superseding indictment and in the alternative to suppress the, quote, 15 boxes based on prosecutorial misconduct resulting in due process violations, impermissible pre-indictment delay in grand jury abuses. And number three, motion to a suppress evidence seized during the raid at Mar-a-Lago and obtained in violation of President Trump's attorney-client privilege and B, dismiss the superseding indictment based on prejudice from this privilege violation.

Hmm. And, you know, of course, these are going to all be on the secret docket, so we can't see them. But the violation of attorney client privilege with regard to the raid, which is his name for a lawfully executed search warrant, Mar-a-Lago, that attorney client privilege was all hashed out by the DC chief judge at the time. And so when we have some of those, like we're bringing down stuff from the DC circuit, that could be part of it as well. Then Jack Smith had to file a motion called the government's conditional motion for leave to file a surreply to defendant Nauda's reply in support of his motion to dismiss based on selective and

vindictive prosecution. So remember what top of the show I said we're going to talk a lot about motion practice in this particular episode. Usual motion practice includes a brief like a motion to dismiss. Then that's followed by a response from the government. Then that is followed by a reply from the person who filed the initial motion. And the rules about motion practice say you cannot raise new arguments or present new facts in a reply that weren't included in your original motion or your original

brief or pleading. And it appears from this filing with this long title from special counsel that Walt Notta broke those rules. And so the government is asking for permission to file a surreply, a fourth document to Notta's reply so that they can address this new information. But the motion practice on the issue, selective and vindictive prosecution, is filed on the secret docket. So Jack Smith opens with this. And I'll tell you why I think this is really interesting, why he filed this on the public docket in a minute. He says, on March 24th, defendant Walt Nauta filed a reply in support of his motion to dismiss the indictment for selective and vindictive prosecution. None of Nauda's motions, the government response or Nauda's reply has yet been docketed publicly

or received an ECF number. And he has to say that in a footnote because you're supposed to refer to the ECF number in your filing, but there isn't one. So it's clear to the person reading it in your filing. But there isn't one. So it's clear to the person reading it, what you're responding to. So he has to say that thing where you put by the thing. Yeah, and to be clear, you have to be clear

about what you're responding to because you're not allowed to add stuff after the fact, which is exactly where you're going. Yep, and Jack Smith continues and said, stuff after the fact, which is exactly where you're going. Yep. Jack Smith continues and said, in his reply, Nauda, for the first time, made numerous false factual assertions and meritless arguments that could have been raised in his initial motion.

That was no less procedurally improper than it was a month ago when the government sought and obtained the same relief that it seeks here, that the court either disregard defense assertions and arguments improperly raised in a reply or grant the government permission to file a surreply. Now Andy I have personal experience with this where the opposing party files a motion you file a response and then in their reply they include all kinds of false information, new arguments, and they do that because they know you can't respond to it.

That's the last thing that they can file on the matter. Right. It's the last in the series. So the government here wants the judge to do what she did a month ago when they tried the same schtick to either ignore the new stuff or let the government file an additional reply. Yeah, it's incredibly frustrating because like the rules are the rules. They're there to be fair to everyone, but also to keep things moving forward. And people violate them in this instance, for the reason you identified, it's to like, take a shot that does not get responded to.

But also in the broader sense, if you let people do this and then you let the other side file their surreply, it goes on forever. It could never stop, right? You can people, then they'll, well, we wanna file a surreply response to the surreply. And then I have to, because until the judge comes in

and lays down the hammer and says, no, I'm disregarding your response and no sir reply necessary, we move forward. They're going to keep doing it until she takes a strong position and smacks them down a little bit, which she's clearly not willing to do. Right. Yeah. So special counsel goes on to outline the argument on the public docket in their request

to file a response on the secret docket. That does seem like Jack Smith is getting some of the secret docket information out to the public here, which is kind of cool. So the special counsel says, "'In his motion, Nauta's animus argument "'was based entirely on allegations about, "'A, his attorney's conversation

over coffee with a prosecutor during which the prosecutor allegedly said the government would not quote accept anything less than Mr. Nauta's full cooperation and later sent Nauta a target letter and B, Nauta's declining to testify in the grand jury after receiving the target letter. In its response, the government explained that Nauta's arguments were meritless because, among other things, his decision not to testify before the grand jury was not an invocation of his Fifth Amendment rights, and the government's decision to charge him after he declined to cooperate did not amount to vindictiveness as a matter of law. Nauta spent over half of his reply laying out new factual allegations and theories of animus that he failed to mention, much less argue, in his opening motion.

Many of the factual allegations are flat out false, and the associated theories of animus are deeply flawed. But for present purposes, it is beyond question that at the time Nauta filed his motion, he and his counsel were fully aware of all the facts and arguments they improperly saved for their reply. Nauta has no excuse for not including them in his opening motion, and the court should disregard them entirely in deciding that motion. So he's not only laying out what Naut Nada's arguments are on the secret docket, which I think is great, but he's further saying, like, you saved this all for the reply. You

had all this information when you filed your initial motion. You know, because sometimes you get new information, right? There's a late discovery production or something, and that would give you a reason to file leave of court to file a supplemental, right? Or something to add this new information that we got. There's no new information here. So it's just completely improper. And I like that he's summarizing what's on the secret docket for us. And the first example is that in his motion, Nada named two people that he says are similarly situated to him that were not indicted. And as you know, we've talked about this in previous episodes, part of arguing a vindictive and selective prosecution is that you have to show other people who did the same stuff

you did, but were not charged. It's called being similarly situated or a comparator. The government responded with reasons why his two examples were not at all similarly situated to him. But in his reply, Noddy decided he would complain that the government only acknowledged those two and tried to add new examples, including the examples Trump used in his vindictive and selective prosecution memo, Biden's staff. Right? Right. So Jack Smith is giving us a peek not only into Nada's motion, but also Trump's motion, both filed on the secret docket. And he concludes with the court should not consider

facts and arguments raised for the first time and Nada's reply in support of his motions to dismiss consider facts and arguments raised for the first time and not as reply in support of his motions to dismiss based on selective and vindictive prosecution. In the alternative, the court should permit the government to file a surreply within one week of the court's order. And I suspect that she's not going to come in and say, I'm not going to consider your new arguments that you made in your reply brief because they're improper to make at this point and you had all the information and you didn't include them in your initial motion. And so no, I'm not going to consider it and no, we don't need the government to file your request to file a surreply is moot because I'm not going to consider these arguments.

She's probably going to come in, allow them to do a thing, maybe start a whole new motion practice and say, and then they have two weeks to reply to your sir reply and you can respond to that if necessary and just drag this out more. Totally, totally agree. It's going to just, the beat goes on. That's all it is. It's good that this nonsense never ends because she does not have the inclination to end it. She has the power to end it. She doesn't seem to have the inclination. Whether that's from a lack of confidence or bias or all the other theories that everybody else has, who knows?

We don't have an answer to that. But the practical implication is this thing just goes around and around in circles. Well, my initial thought way at the beginning of this whole thing was that she won't make any outright errors, but she will nickel and dime on delay. And this would be part of that. We still, Andy, don't have her ruling on the motion for reconsideration to publish those witness lists, for example. Right. Still not here. And I think I said, if I were her, I just wouldn't rule on it.

I'd let that languish. If I were trying to delay this and not go up to the 11th circuit, right? Yeah. She took briefings and had a hearing on the new trial date. Never said it. Nope. 99 judges out of 100 would have given you a date at the end of the hearing. Yeah. From the bench. Yeah. Much like Judge Marchand did. We're at least a month beyond that now. Yep. So anyway. All right. We have more to get to, including a couple of filings that did manage to make it on the public docket, but we have to take a quick break. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. All right. Welcome back. So we've covered the secret docket requests, but we do have two filings

this week on the public docket, amazingly enough, in Florida, including Trump's reply to the government's response to his motions to dismiss based on immunity and the allegedly unlawful appointment and funding of the special counsel. So let's start with Trump's contention that Jack Smith is unlawfully appointed and funded. This is the reply to the government's response to Trump's initial motion. As we discussed in the A block, regular motion practice includes a motion followed by a response and then ending with a reply to the government's response. And as we've learned, you can't raise new arguments in a reply that you didn't make in your initial motion. Well, you're not supposed to.

So we've heard these arguments and here's the crux of Trump's reply. He says, the special counsel's office claims here that Smith is subject to the direction and supervision of the attorney general. But the office assured the judge presiding over the District of Columbia prosecution that, quote, coordination with the Biden administration is non-existent. There is significant tension between the office's assurances to that court that Smith is independent and not prosecuting the Republican nominee for president at

the direction of the Biden administration and the office's assurances here that Smith is not independent and is instead so thoroughly supervised and accountable to President Biden and Attorney General Garland that this court should not be concerned about such tremendous power being exercised to alter the trajectory of the ongoing presidential election. Wow. Okay. So now, and this feels like a new argument to me. I didn't see this in the initial briefing. And so that we might see something from Jack Smith about that. But I guess basically he's trying to say that, you know, in DC when I said that, you know, you and Jack Smith

and the attorney general and President Biden were all conspiring to keep me out of the White House or whatever. But here, Jack Smith is arguing that, hey, the special counsel is supervised by the attorney general and he's lawfully appointed. Those two ideas are somehow in conflict with one another. Do I have that? Yeah. So basically what he's trying to do is make the special counsel look like a liar. He's basically saying, he told the DC judge something and now he's telling you the opposite. So he must be lying to one of you. That's what he's trying to accomplish. And to do that, he's conflating these two representations by the special counsel's office. The one that

he made in DC saying, no, I'm not taking direction from President Biden. This prosecution is not being directed by the White House. And two, down here in Florida, where he's saying, I am being adequately and thoroughly supervised by the attorney general. Trump is basically saying those things are in conflict and they really aren't. They're separate and distinct ideas.

You can hold both of those ideas in your head at once. And they really aren't. They're separate and distinct ideas. You can hold both of those ideas in your head at once. But this is basically like a setup for a cheap shot. That's how I look at it. Yeah. No, I agree. Yeah. So he also argues, the special counsel's office is pursuing two different cases in two jurisdictions

in order to maximize interference in the ongoing presidential election. This tactic is the luxury of a prosecutor facing no resource constraints. Wow. I mean, I mean, technically no prosecutors ever facing resource constraints. I don't even know what to say to that. Yeah. It's just a standard kind of inflammatory, conclusory, argumentative style of Trump's lawyers. There's no legal argument here. There's no like, here's a premise, here's a law, here's an interpretation, here's the case law that supports this interpretation, here's why the

facts conform to this interpretation. That's why the facts conform to this interpretation. That's like legal argument 101. Their approach is like, he's bad and it's all about election interference and Joe Biden is calling all the shots. Like just these wild conclusions based on nothing. Yeah. And you know, by the way, the special counsel's office isn't pursuing two different cases in two jurisdictions to maximize election interference. He's pursuing two different cases in two jurisdictions because you committed crimes in two jurisdictions. Right.

That's why. Yeah. And honestly, because he lived in two different jurisdictions when these two crimes occurred. Right. Yeah. And I mean, I think we've all had good reason to believe that maybe Jack should have tried harder to bring this case in DC. But I digress.

Yeah. No. And hey, we all wanted him to. We all wanted this to be in one jurisdiction, my friend. Like what are we talking about? And Judge Cannon confirms that desire with every pseudo half-rolling. But yeah, and it would be interesting to see if Jack Smith brings that up. Say, hey, I wanted to bring this in DC, but jurisdictional constraints put us down here in Florida with you.

It's going to be hard for him not to say, I'd like to have this case anywhere on the planet, other than here in your courtroom, Judge Cannon. Honestly, this is awful, but I'm sure you can say that. All right. The other motion or the other filing is that Trump filed his reply to Jack Smith's response to his motion to dismiss based on immunity. You'll recall Trump says he declared the records, the classified documents personal under the Presidential Records Act by the sheer fact that he left office and brought them with him. That makes them personal.

Soterios Johnson It's the abracadabra act. Lauren Henry Right. And since he was in office when that happened, and he was president when he did that, that he's immune from prosecution on counts one through 32, which are the counts under the Espionage Act 793e. Jack Smith replied saying, no, every crime charge happened after you left office. And now Trump is replying saying, the same prosecutors who wrongly argued that the Espionage Act is clear, and clear is in quotes,

now claim that a motion based on an issue of first impression that is currently on review before the Supreme Court is quote-unquote frivolous in an effort to avoid any necessary appellate review. If nothing else, these prosecutors are consistent, consistent in their willingness to say and do everything in their power to try to rush this novel and flawed case to trial, notwithstanding complex legal issues and ongoing discovery violations. Oh, he's making discovery violations accusations here as well, like he did in New York. It's all over the map. It's like a shotgun blast of nonsense.

It is. Not only that, in support of President Biden's election interference mission against his leading opponent, this timely motion to dismiss is most certainly not frivolous or dilatory based on the allegations in the superseding indictment and subsequent concessions by the special counsel's office. Counts one through 32 are based in part on Trump's official acts during his first term in office. And notice they say during his first term in office.

That's like when I started introducing my husband as my first husband. Like, don't... he just throws that in there. It's a little jumpy to conclusions maybe. Hmm. Yeah. Goes on to say, accordingly, the court should hold this motion in abeyance pending the Supreme Court's review of the presidential immunity doctrine in Trump, the United States, and dismiss counts one through 32 after the Supreme Court's decision and preclude evidence

of President Trump's official acts at any potential trial in this case. How about hold it in advance until the Supreme Court reviews and then dismiss all the counts after the Supreme Court reviews and then dismiss all the counts after the Supreme Court's decision. Little assumption there that the Supreme Court's going to go its way, I guess. This whole thing is based on the most amazing bank shot I've ever seen. It's, I have the abracadabra power over the records and I did that while I was in office. And I have complete presidential monarchy immunity because I was president. So therefore, you must dismiss this case.

It's like the theory, his conclusion is based on two insane interpretations of totally separate laws that are not actually law or fact. Yeah, and it's actually in conflict with arguments he made down in Fulton County this week. Because in Fulton County, he's arguing that all the stuff that he said in the 2020 election is protected by the First Amendment because he was a candidate for president. Not acting as the chief executive of the nation. Yeah.

Basically, here's the two arguments. In Fulton County, it's I can lie. The First Amendment protects my right to lie as a candidate for president. And in DC, and with the immunity case, it's my official acts as president protect me. Provide immunity over all the crimes I commit for lying yeah about the election so it's too conflicting he has a great ability to have conflicting arguments depending on where he is yeah okay so also this week we have Carlos de Olive Vera He's filed a reply in support of his motion to either dismiss the charges against him or to get a bill of particulars

From the government's now again, we're deep in the motion practice here. So once again, this is Dale of era filed a motion the special counsel filed a opposition to that motion and now Dale Lavera is filing a reply to the special counsel's opposition. And he's requesting, as I said, either have his charges dismissed or to get a bill of particulars. So a bill of particulars, AG, this is, I love this one because it's like such almost like a, it's such an old timey term, it sounds like cowboy time or something.

I go down and get me a bill of particulars. But a bill of particulars is defined as a written itemization of claims in a lawsuit or prosecution that the defendant may demand of the plaintiff or the prosecutor in some situations basically to clarify the details of the plaintiff or the prosecutor in some situations, basically to clarify the details of the claims. So particulars, that's like the evidence that's going to be used against you at trial. So the defendant will go to the prosecutor and say,

I demand a bill of particulars because I need to know more about the evidence and the theories that you're going to throw at me in trial so that I have an opportunity to prepare myself, prepare a defense, do whatever investigating I need to do to solidify that. Yeah. And I think a good example that we can look at is the Fulton County case, where the judge there, Judge McAfee, threw out three of the charges against Donald Trump because they weren't particular enough. They were all charges having to do with Trump soliciting officers to violate their oath

of office. But Fonny Willis did not say which oath to which constitution, Georgia or the United States and how what they did, the pressure would have violated those oaths. But they don't have bills of particulars in Georgia State. They don't have this option. So the prosecution in essence doesn't get the opportunity to fix or correct or provide more detail to the indictment, it just gets dismissed. You got to write them back up and go back to the grand jury and get a superseding indictment

if you want to bring those charges. Exactly. And so she has an opportunity to do that. Don't know if she will, but that's kind of, that's what's going on here. But in federal cases, you ask for a bill of particulars or to dismiss and the government has a chance to, well, the judge has to say, you know, grant the motion for a bill of particulars or to dismiss and the government has a chance to, well, the judge has to say, you know, grant the motion for a bill of particulars and then the government can be more detailed about it.

Yeah. And I have to say, unlike the crazy Trump motions that we've been looking at and now a crazy Walt Nodda motion, this one actually has some substance to it. This is kind of resonating with what I thought from day one, the first time I read that indictment or the superseding indictment that included Dale Lavera, I thought they might have problems with this guy because it's not clear from the indictment, I don't believe that it's clear from the indictment that Dale Lavera knew about the subpoena for the records. Therefore, if he didn't know that he was getting these boxes or throwing away these boxes or whatever he was doing with them in an effort to obstruct an official

proceeding, you're gonna have a hard time approving that charge against him. So in any case, Deo Lavera argues that the superseding indictment fails to allege an offense against Mr. De Oliveira with respect to the boxes. He says the superseding indictment does not allege that Mr. De Oliveira ever knew about the classified documents at issue in this case, and the government has conceded as much. The superseding indictment also states that Mr. Notta and Dale Lavera, quote, brought to the storage room only approximately 30 boxes on June 2, within hours of Trump Attorney 1's review of the boxes in the storage room. The superseding indictment specifically excludes Mr. Dale Lavera

from the prior movement of approximately 64 boxes out of the storage room between May 24 and June 1. Even if there was some nefarious purpose for doing so, which the superseding at Ibane also fails to allege. So basically what he's saying there is, yeah, you've alleged I moved boxes in, which were later looked at by his attorney, but you didn't include me in the allegation of having moved boxes out. The whole thing about the 30 going in is significant because 60 or more came out. So it shows that they were only putting back

a very selected smaller kind of subset. Dale Lavera goes on to say, the superseding indictment makes no mention of Mr. Dale Lavera being made aware of the May 11, 2022 grand jury subpoena demanding documents with classified markings. And it makes no allegation that Mr. Deo Lavera was aware of the contents of the boxes that he helped move on June 2, 2022. Indeed, according to the facts alleged in the superseding indictment, Trump attorney one would have reviewed precisely the documents that Mr. Dale Lavera did help move into the

storage room and not any documents that are alleged to have not been in the storage room. Again, Mike, you have Dale Lavera putting stuff back into play. You're missing Dale Lavera on the side of this equation that would be intentionally removing documents, taking them away from the attorney, excluding them from the review. Yeah, but do you have to know all the aspects of a conspiracy to be a member of the conspiracy? Or am I thinking more Rico? Well, I mean, you certainly is a little bit different with

conspiracy, you certainly have to have knowingly and willfully agreed to engage in the conduct that's criminal. In this case, the conduct that's criminal is obstructing an official proceeding. And in order to to obstruct official proceeding, you have to know that there was one. Right? So, now- Right.

A nexus to obstruct. Right. The government, if all he got was, hey, go put these boxes back in the storage room, and he doesn't know what's in them, he doesn't know it's classified, he doesn't know about the subpoena, that's not much of a case there. Same thing with the video tapes. If Trump says, get the IT guy on the phone and destroy all the tapes from this date to that date, and he doesn't know that those tapes

are subject to the subpoena, he's just doing what his boss told him to do. You're allowed to destroy your own security tapes whenever you want, as long as they're not under subpoena. So there are some weaknesses there. Now, it's also possible, and we've talked before on earlier shows that, especially with the recent investigation that we know has been going on

with witnesses from Mar-a-Lago, it's possible that these newer witnesses are telling the government like, hey, Dale Lavera told me he was really concerned about moving these boxes around because, you know, they were supposed to go to the lawyer and here we are taking them away something like that there could be witness testimony or transcripts of text messages or anything like that that shows that Dale Lavera had knowledge of the of the process that was underlying these problems but we don't know that

yet. Gotcha. He also argues the superseding indictment also fails to allege an offense against Mr. Dale Lavera with respect to Mar-a-Lago security footage. He says the government's apparent response to this infirmity is that count 33 is supported by the allegations contained in counts 40 and 41, which specifically alleged that Dale Lavera requested that another Trump employee delete security camera footage at Mar-a-Lago in order to prevent the footage from being provided to a grand jury.

And which is referenced as one of the seven actions listed in the, quote, manner and means of the conspiracy in count 33. To start, it would certainly be helpful for the government to confirm through a bill of particulars that it is not alleging that Mr. De Olivaire engaged in any of the other six actions listed as manner and means of the conspiracy. As to obstruction charged in counts 40 and 41, the superseding indictment again does not even claim that Mr. De Lavera was aware of the existence of any government investigation or the June 24th, 2022 grand jury subpoena for security footage at the time of his alleged

conversation with Trump employee four. And the government does not so assert in its opposition nor would they have any base to even assuming for the moment that Trump employee for was finally telling the truth as the government claims the superseding indictment stated that mr. Dale Lavera asked him quote how many days the server retained footage it then states that Mr. Dale Lavera informed Trump employee that quote, the boss wanted the server deleted. Again, even assuming the veracity of Trump employee four, the superseding indictment fails to allege

that Mr. Dale Lavera quote, requested that Trump employee four delete security camera footage, let alone that he did so to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury. Okay. So, Jack Smith says in the indictment that he did ask Tavera's employee for to delete the security footage to prevent it from being provided to a federal grand jury, but he doesn't explain how De Olavara specifically was preventing that footage from being provided to a grand jury. Exactly.

I see. He says with specificity, de la Vera asked Trump employee four to delete the footage, but he doesn't tie it to the grand jury subpoena. He doesn't explicitly tie it to the grand jury subpoena. He doesn't explicitly tie it. Like I said, there may be witnesses or facts or transcripts that tie that together. I would expect there are because no prosecutor is going to bring a case for obstruction that has such a glaring hole in it. I'm thinking of Brian Butler, employee number five, who's been making the rounds that perhaps

he has some information about whether his very good friend, Carlos de la Vera knew that there was. We talked about that as soon as he came out, right? We said like, this guy's really tight with Dale Lavera. They apparently used to take like long walks at night together around their neighborhood. So it's very possible that Dale Lavera made really incriminating statements to him during some of those encounters. If so, that would be a great benefit to that witness. Yeah. And we may need to see Jack Smith spell that out a little bit more, depending on whether

or not Judge Cannon says you need to submit a bill of particulars here. I think that he gets that. That's my strong guess is that she's either going to, I mean, I guess she could do either. She could dismiss the case. I don't think she's, again, I don't think she's got the nerve to do that. That'll go to the 11th circuit and she doesn't want to go to the 11th circuit. She's going to require a bill of particulars here, which would be interesting for us to read if nothing else. Right. We'll get more information about tying De Lavera more directly to the conspiracy.

For sure. All right. We've got more to go over, including some really intricate lawfare from lawfare from our friend Roger Moore Lawfare with regard to Cannon's request for those jury instructions based on the earth being flat. So we're going to talk about that but we have to take a quick break. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey everybody, welcome back. All right. I wanted to share some insights from Roger Parloff at Lawfare about an issue we addressed on the show last week.

And here's what Roger writes. He says after US District Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order on March 18th concerning prospective jury instructions in former President Donald Trump's classified documents case, some observers wondered if the government has any means of challenging jury instructions before they're even delivered. Let's explore that question. To make a long story short, there's a path, but it's not easy. He goes on to say the order asked the parties to quote, engage with two

prospective jury instructions relating to the term unauthorized possession, an element of the crime of willful retention of national defense information. There's no question that Judge Cannon's order of March 18th is not itself reviewable by an appellate court. As it is rendered no decision on anything. So, the order is not appealable in and of itself. And it merely invited the parties to brief and react to Judge Cannon's proposals by April 2nd. Still, the order was sufficiently provocative that I looked into the hypothetical question of whether, if she eventually did commit to delivering such an instruction, the government could challenge it before it was delivered. Such a remedy might be essential because double jeopardy bars the government from taking an appeal

from a jury's acquittal. Similarly, the government cannot appeal a judge's directed verdict of acquittal if it's issued prior to submitting the case to the jury, meaning if a jury convicts and the judge later on a post-verdict motion overturns the verdict and orders an acquittal, that order can be appealed. Right, but if the judge simply issues a directed verdict of acquittal before the case goes to the jury, which frequently defendants will make that motion just before the case goes to the jury, which frequently defendants will make that motion just before

the case goes to the jury, they'll say motion to dismiss because the government hasn't, you know, proved their case or whatever. If that cannot be appealed. Yeah, Trump does tries it all the time too. He did it in E. Jean Carroll's case filing motions to dismiss all throughout the trial. You'll remember, of course, the judge denied them all on the spot from the bench. But had remember, of course, the judge denied them all on the spot from the bench, but had he granted those, that's not appealable here in a federal situation. That's right.

So after doing a lot of research, Parloff found six instances in which the government challenged yet to be delivered jury instructions by means of a petition for a writ of mandamus. Now let's remind everyone a writ of mandamus is basically you're asking the court to issue an order that commands the court or another government institution to take some sort of action, okay?

So of those six cases, in four of those instances, the petition succeeded. In two challenges, one successful, one not, the government brought the action after the jury had already been sworn in. So, Parlov stresses that all six cases were spurred by extraordinary circumstances, which is a requirement for seeking mandamus relief. He says that some of these cases include procedural issues that probably would not apply to Trump's Florida case. And he notes that none of the six cases happened in the 11th circuit.

So we don't have any direct precedent here from the 11th circuit. Parlov goes on to state, two cases arose in the second circuit from prosecutions in Manhattan, while four came from the third circuit and related to prosecutions in New Jersey or Pennsylvania. Two of the Third Circuit cases, so two of those four, were handed down the same month

and involved, sadly, the same veteran district judge who, then 89 years old, had begun issuing a pattern of unreasonable and largely unexplained rulings. Okay, so we're not going to cover all six cases, but two of them clearly stand out. So once again, here's Parloff. He says, let's begin with the third circuit line of cases. They kick off with United States versus Wexler, which was decided in 1994. Victor Wexler was a stockbroker charged with major federal tax crimes in the District of New Jersey. Shortly before trial, in response to motions in limine by both sides seeking to clarify which defenses would be permitted, U.S. District Judge John Bissell ruled that

he would give the jury an instruction on the deduction of interest payments from, quote, sham transactions that in the government's view was contrary to, quote, well-settled law. The error would severely prejudice the prosecution of Wexler, the government claimed, as well as that of other tax fraud defendants. Now, the government asked for a stay so that it could seek appellate review from the Third Circuit. Judge Bissell denied it, but the Third Circuit granted one. While the government can, by statute, take interlocutory appeals from dismissals of charges or from orders suppressing or excluding evidence, it cannot appeal an

adverse order relating to jury instructions. So the government sought review by writ of mandamus, a common law remedy federal courts are authorized to grant under the All Rits Act at 28 USC section 1651. So having received this request for a writ of mandamus, the Third Circuit granted the writ stating, we find in this case that the government has no alternative avenue of relief. For double jeopardy reasons, no appeal will be possible once the trial begins. The government will not be able to interrupt the trial by filing an appeal or a renewed petition for mandamus when the district judge commences to give the erroneous instruction.

And if, as the government anticipates, and Wexler does not contest, jury deliberations guided by the erroneous instruction end in acquittal, the injury to the government will be irremediable. We find that the adoption of a clearly erroneous jury instruction that entails a high probability of failure of a prosecution, a failure the government could not then seek to remedy by appeal or otherwise, constitutes the kind of extraordinary situation in which we are empowered to issue the writ of mandamus. Yeah, that's interesting. And that is, it seems like it stems from the judge saying that there's

going to be this jury instruction, not asking for input on jury instructions. Right. But Roger Parlov says that if special counsel's office ever does see a need to challenge one of Judge Cannon's instructions, it will doubtless cite the helpful language from Wexler above. Nevertheless, in 2006, another Third Circuit panel stressed that Wexler was reserved for truly extraordinary circumstances. The later case, U.S. v. Arthur Farnsworth, involved another tax prosecution. Again, the government feared that the trial judge's instruction would render a conviction impossible. This time, though, the Third Circuit

denied the petition. And while the Third Circuit denied the petition. And while the Third Circuit rejected this argument on the facts in Farnsworth, it's an argument that special counsel's office might reprise that Jack Smith might use with some force in Trump's case. What gives the contention added weight here is that Judge Cannon herself, a few hours after the hearing on March 14th, issued an order denying without prejudice one of Trump's motions to dismiss. She wrote that rather than prematurely decide now whether the application of 18 US Code section 793e yields unsalvageable vagueness, the court elects to deny the motion without

prejudice to be raised as appropriate in connection with jury instruction and or other appropriate motions. Four days later, she issued the order proposing the jury instruction that seemed to all but direct the jury to acquit. So that makes this a little bit different and brings Farnsworth into the mix. Yes. Right. Because she basically dismissed that motion or she denied the motion to dismiss that the Trump filed based on vagueness of the law of the Espionage Act. And she denied it without prejudice, allowing them to bring it up again. And so that sort of opens the door here. And since Judge Cannon herself seemed to view her jury instruction as an alternative to dismissing the counts outright, the special

counsel could argue that her instruction should be seen as the equivalent of a dismissal and appeal it. Now, those are the two most relevant cases here, but you can read the entire piece by Roger Parlov at lawfairmedia.org. He talks about the other cases that he found, the six that he found. And like you said in the beginning, two of them were from that judge who was 89 years old and just started issuing a litany of bad decisions. And so those aren't really relevant here. So, but I wanted to go, I thought, you know, Andy, you and I should talk about these two because, you know, Wexler and Farnsworth seem like they could be relevant to this case. Yeah, I think so. And heard quote unquote, I want to throw air quotes around dismissal

here of the 793 unconstitutional vagueness motion. It was done, like not even just leaving the door open for him to challenge this in the form of a jury instruction, but like basically asked for it. Like she references that in the order, like you can bring this up again later at this time. You know, it just feels more and more like a total setup. Right. And that sort of a setup is what would get you arguably to the Wexler extraordinary circumstance standard. Yeah, and we'll see. And I know that, you know, there were kind of two ways to address this weird

jury instruction thing. I said, I imagine by April 2nd, which is what Tuesday, Jack Smith would file a response saying, I'm not going to pretend the law says something it doesn't dismiss or don't. I'm paraphrasing. I'm probably more flowery than that. Or as Andrew Weissman has indicated that you, writ of mandamus is another alternative. Roger Parloff went and found all of the instances that could be applicable. But again, none of them are in the 11th circuit. So there would be no precedent here, but that wouldn't stop Jack Smith from making precedent by going to the 11th circuit. Hey, precedent's got to get made somewhere. It does. And certainly these cases would be relevant to the, you know, if you had cases that were

directly on point in the 11th Circuit, you would basically have to argue those and it'd be kind of a stretch to rope in something like Wexler or Farnsworth. But where the 11th Circuit precedent doesn't exist, then it's kind of anybody's fair game. That's all you got. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, we don't have precedent here, but we'd like to start. Yeah. Nice piece of work by Roger.

Yeah, really, really in depth, very well explained. I really recommend you check it out. Again, lawfaremedia.org. All right, we have listener questions and a little bit of information about John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark, but we have to take one last quick break. So everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Bum bum bum ba da da da da da da.

Ba da da da da da da da da. Bum. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. So John Eastman, who is an unindicted co-conspirator so far in the DC Jack Smith case for election subversion, has been recommended to be disbarred by a California judge and it didn't go well for him. We've talked about this a little bit at the top

of the show. But it's like a very long decision. I have it here and it looks like it's like 128 pages. Yeah. And he, the judge here really just sort of lays it all out. And you know, says that Eastman and Trump conspired to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, which is like another California judge found in 2022 when he was trying to keep his emails from going to the January 6th committee. And that was- And teed him up for a crime fraud exception. That was the crime fraud exception.

Right. Exactly. You can't claim attorney-client privilege if you're climbing. And so that was brought up in this particular case. I think that I know Joyce Vance said on Twitter that in the course of John Eastman's disbarment proceeding, a bar court ruled that Eastman and Trump conspired to obstruct a lawful function of the government of the United States by conspiring to disrupt the electoral count. So she brought that up, felt that that was important. John Eastman's wrongdoing was so extensive in 2020,

his refusal to accept responsibility so pervasive that the only remedy is disbarment. That's what the judge said. So bad week for him. Found that he had committed moral turpitude, which I guess is just the conversion of he lied. That's kind of how the California court refers to that. But man, somebody finds it guilty of multiple counts of moral turpitude. It's not a good week. Yeah. And that's why all the lawyers who pled guilty in Fulton County wanted the moral turpitude language stricken from their plea agreements so that it couldn't count against them in a disbarment proceeding.

That's right. It's interesting though, there's a bit of a division of opinion, I think, in the legal community on this disbarment proceeding against Eastman. Some folks feel like the court has gone kind of too far in, the language that he used in his representation of Trump. Like it's one thing to say, yeah, we think that you engaged in a conspiracy to overthrow the election. It's a different thing to in a unqualified way, basically criticize a lawyer's choice of words because they feel like that starts to step into the lawyer's first amendment right and also their obligation to provide

a zealous advocacy for their client. So I know it's kind of a bit of a hair splitting exercise, but it is something that I've noticed has the legal community a bit divided. And there are, I think, smart people who have concerns about that. So it's not like a reflexively, like everything else seems so reflexively political, like everything seems like, oh, you like Trump or you don't. These are people who are concerned about the court's kind of incursion into that, what has always been considered somewhat of a fairly sacrosanct area that being how an individual attorney decides to represent their client.

And I want to correct myself. I said he, but the judge is a she, Yvette Rowland. And she actually did reject one of the charges against Eastman. She found that the investigators did not prove that his January 6 rally speech directly incited the crowd. So she did find that. According to Kyle Cheney at Politico, the inactive status for Eastman takes effect in three days and remains in effect until the Supreme Court either affirms his disbarment or orders a different penalty. So he can't practice law anymore, but he's not technically disbarred yet. This is the start of a process leading to the California Supreme Court. So we'll see. We'll keep an eye on it for you.

And also, you know, we've been watching pretty closely the hearings, as we mentioned at the top of the show, for Jeff Clark and his disbarment proceeding that's happening in the DC bar and disciplinary board. And it's been a very interesting. I mean, I think it's as close as we'll get to a January 6 trial this year. That is so sad. I know. I know. I can't believe I just heard you say that. Before you and I- I mean, you're right.

You're not wrong, but- Before you and I hit the record button, I was like, oh yeah, okay, episode 70. And I was like, Jesus, is it episode 70? And we still don't even have a trial date in either of these prosecutions. Here we are. Here we are. So listener questions this week. Again, we'll have a link in the show notes that you can click to submit your questions.

What do we have this week, Andy? All right. So we have two. The first one is like super quick. So I added it and it comes to us from Ken. Just Ken. Anywhere else he'd be a 10. Anywhere else I'd be a 10. I'm just kidding. I love that.

Anywhere else I'd be a 10. You know, I'm sorry, Ken. I'm sure everybody you know is throwing some version of that crappy joke at you. I apologize for that. But Ken says, this is one of the best podcasts I listen to. You both are so informative and always excellently prepared. I've not missed an episode since the start. My question, is a defendant in a criminal trial mandated to attend every day of the trial?

Ken, your answer is yes. They are absolutely required to attend in the federal trials and also in state criminal trial. You have to be there. Unlike a civil case where you can phone it in, right? You can send your attorney, you can never show up. That may not be a great idea, but you have the ability to do that on a criminal side, you have to be there.

Yep. So that's question number one. Question number two comes to us from Monica. She says, hi AG and AM. I look forward to the pod every week. In regards to Judge Cannon's order involving jury instructions, can the special counsel in their reply I look forward to the pot every week in regards to Judge Cannon's order involving jury instructions. Can the special counsel in their reply simply not engage with the scenarios she put forth

with the reasoning that both are not consistent with the law? Would there be any consequences for that? So this is basically the position that you have taken, A.G., on this one. And I like it. It's appealing to me, but it is super high stakes for him to say. That's a good question too, because this is just what I would do,

and I'm not a lawyer or a special counsel, and I don't know if you're even allowed to just not answer a judge's question and challenge her to dismiss or not. You know what I mean? It's bizarre. Well, we are way deep into Bizarro land here. This is not like a normal thing in any sense,

but like imagine if a judge asked you to misrepresent something, you'd be really in a bind there because you can't misrepresent anything to the court. But if a judge orders you to do it anyway, I don't know. It's one of these kind of unsolvable things. If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you know? Exactly. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you know? Exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. So, let's assume that he can say something along the lines that you have been proposing like, hey, I'm not going to draft a jury instruction around what I believe is a clear error of law. And then he's kind of calling her out.

Like, just if you don't, that's the instruction you're going to go with, then just dismiss the case. That's a really, it's cool, but it's also way high stakes. Because if she does dismiss the case and then you appeal it, you know, the appellate court could say, you asked her to dismiss the case. We're not going to hear the appeal. So yeah, that could go down in flames pretty hard. But your question, would there be consequences for that? Is a really good one. And I don't know the only kind of consequences that the prosecutors ever get are kind of a reprimand from the bench. I think you could probably count on her giving one of those. They could also impose sanctions, I think, on the prosecution. Although

sanctions typically involve money. And I don't think that I'm not aware of a situation in which a court has imposed sanctions on the prosecution, basically forcing the government to pay a penalty. She could make a recommendation to the bar to hold the attorneys in violation of some part of the ethical code of lawyers. So there's, I think it's possible, but like everything in this case, really not clear. No. Yeah. And I suppose Jack Smith could say, I am loathe to do this because it's wrong on the law, but here's your wrong on the law jury instructions. Yeah.

One of those arguments in the alternative sort of ways to phrase it, right? This is not right. This is not the law. This should not be your ruling. You should not decide in this case. However, because you have forced us to do this, this is what the jury instruction would look like.

So that's probably what we'll end up seeing. But who knows? Maybe they just sidetrack it entirely and drop a request for writ of mandamus to 11th Circuit on Tuesday. That'll be fun. Yeah. It's due April 2nd, the jury instruction. So we'll know by the next time we have the next episode, episode 71 next week. Yeah. So Monica, stand by. The answer coming your episode, episode 71 next week. So Monica, stand by. The answer coming your way, one way or another. Maybe not the answer any of us expected, but we'll see.

It's probably something I hadn't thought of, right? It usually is. All right, thank you for your amazing questions. Again, there's a link in the show notes where you can submit questions to us. We really appreciate it, and thanks so much for listening. And Andy, you and I will have more information on this soon, but you and I are going to be at the Schar School, George Mason University

at the Amphitheater there doing a live episode of the Jack podcast on May 7th. So I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, I'm so excited for this. As you know, AG, I teach at the Schar School. I teach one class every spring semester in national security law and policy. It's a terrific place. My colleagues there, especially folks in the Hayden Center that focus on kind of national security type issues, have graciously agreed to host us. So we'll have more information coming out. It's basically kind of a, it'll be a sign up, an online kind of sign up for tickets to get on the list to come if you're in the area and interested in doing so. But we'll be getting all more information to you guys on that in the near

future. Yep. And you and I and Pete Struck and Glenn Kirschner are going to be at the Hamilton Theater in DC on August 16th. Pres-sale tickets for patrons will go out into your inboxes this Monday. And then the tickets go on sale to the public on Friday. So that's gonna be a lot of fun. And who knows where we'll be in August. I set that date when my tour booker thinking,

for sure we'll have some kind of a trial by then. But maybe not. Maybe not so much. But we'll know more as the months go on and you can follow it all here on the Jack podcast. Thank you so much for listening everybody. Again, submit your questions at the link in the show notes and we will see you next week. I've been Alison Gill. And I'm Andy McCabe.